Human bodies record and store vast amounts of information about the way we move, what we eat, where we live, and our experiences of health and socioeconomic circumstances. Behaviour in our Bones: How Human Behaviour Influences Skeletal Morphology explores how human physical and cultural actions and interactions can be read through careful biological anthropological analyses of skeletal human remains. This book explores the evidence for behaviour, from head to toe, with each chapter dedicated to a specific region of the human body. It offers an overview of how the skull, shoulder, thorax, pelvis, and the upper and lower limbs have been used to infer patterns of activity and other social and cultural behaviours. Chapter authors expertly summarise and critically discuss a range of methodological, theoretical, and interpretive approaches that biological anthropologists use to read skeletal remains and interpret a wide variety of behaviours, including tool use, locomotion, reproduction, health, pathology, and beyond.
1. Introduction 2. Bone Remodelling 3. Methods 4. Social Complexity and the Cranium 5. Diet and the Mandible 6. Occupation and the shoulder 7. Weaponry and the Humerus 8. Tool use and the hand 9. Childbirth and the Pelvis 10. Horse riding and the Pelvis 11. Subsistence, sedentism, and the long bones 12. Locomotion and the foot 13. Injury, care, and skeletal asymmetry 14. Behaviour under the microscope: Bone microstructure 15. Looking for the future in our bones
Dr. Cara Hirst earned her PhD in Dental and Skeletal Bioarchaeology from University College London. Her research focuses on bone remodelling and biomechanical alterations to the human skeleton and inference of behaviour and activity from skeletal morphology. While her specialty is 3D geometric morphometrics and human mandibular morphology, she is interested in a range of methods and behaviours which may be inferred from skeletal morphology. She has presented at numerous conferences and published research papers and chapters for edited books.